June brings new opportunities and ideas, along with ConCarolinas 2015 being over, which is a bummer, because it was really exciting!

Keat and I had a table to tell books (big thank you to Chip for helping us out) and made a lot of connections! We sold some books, raffled off some, and even raised some donation money for Niko (see more later).

To start things off, take a look at this:

Keat and I did roughly 4 panels each, and although the scheduling could've been a bit better, it was still fun. We also got invited to a bunch of parties, which was awesome!

We raised some donation money in Niko's name to be donated to the Humane Alliance, and we raised $61 to be donated, which was awesome since we were basically unheard-of no-name authors.

My Next Series

My next series will be Omega Noir, which will be a magical series, and as I said in my Interview, this series will be "[...] following a "street-smarts" character and exploring the world of magic. Imagine "Harry Potter" meets "Hunger Games" meets "Game of Thrones," to put it simply." I'm already 10 days into writing and 20k words in, so it's coming along nicely.

The big difference will be that this will be almost R-rated, since it will have more of a darker tone. I may bridge it back to PG-13, but it will definitely be dark.

Wow, it's been over a week (almost 2) since I last posted. Does that give you any idea on how busy I have been?

PS: I'm calling this "Nuggets" because we are making home-made chicken nuggets for CJ tonight! YAY!

I won't go into too many finer details, but here's the rundown of the past few weeks:Personal:

Best News:I'm on Google+! I've been waiting forever for a friend to send me an invite, and I finally got one! YAY!(?)

2nd Best News: Netflix has all of the Star Trek Series on Instant Play! I can now watch every episode of TNG, DS9, and Voyager back to back and in chronological order! YAY!!! YAY!!! YAYAYAYAYAY!!!!! (did I say "Yay?") NYAN!

Keat an d I got a used PS3. It's good and all, but we think the main laser went out and we have to get it replaced. TBD

CJ is here for the weekend. Is there a word for "insane insanity to the insane max?" If so, that's what we (me, Keat, and CJ) are together. I don't think there is ever a dull or boring moment.

On the same topic, CJ watched "Robin Hood: Men in Tights" yesterday. Let's just say that he almost died laughing. Finally! A Mel Brooks comedy he likes!

I'm not one for Cosplay I used to not be into Cosplay, but after seeing The Princess Bride a few weeks ago, I'm determined to make Cary's The Dread Pirate Roberts outfit. Basically, it'll be double duty: SCA and Conventions. After that's done, I'm going to make/buy Squall's outfit

The house is coming along nicely. We just mowed the lawn twice. It takes about an hour, depending on how fast you go. We're almost totally unpacked, and having an attic is nice too

Business:

We have a new contract - but I don't know how much things will progress on it since the main contact people aren't being very communicative

I'm interviewing a Sales person on tuesday, and with our current relationship with him, it should be nice.

We may be hiring another developer. I'm negotiating details now.

I'm dealing with a client's security policy that they had to make for one of their clients. It's not looking pretty right now. We have a conference call in a few weeks, and hopefully I don't get my head bitten off. We'll find out.

Our office has been a little rearranged. We removed the couch (put it in our house), added a futon sofa (works better), moved my desk to the window, and took down the table. It's certainly more open now.

I'm trying to figure out a fiasco about some office keys that were misplaced. Basically, I've contacted two previous employees from '08, and it's been crazy trying to figure out where some missing keys went.

I've lost my faith and respect in Parallels. Put it this way: I upgraded my Plesk Control Panel from 7 to 10 (first mistake). I then had to go through all of the configuration files to re-configure the server to work properly. Apparently, instead of editing the main server configuration file, it creates a new one for each edit you make, and they are all titled something like "1300625830.75118100_httpd.include", so trying to find which one was the latest is extremely hard, especially when you are dealing with edits made within seconds of each other instead of minutes. Anyway, I went through Plesk 10 and tried to order a new domain for a client. This sent me to shop.marketplace.parallels.com and told me to login. I logged in with the credentials I had, and it charged me for the domain. I then waited about 24 hours for the global nameservers to catch up, and it turns out that the domain was mis-registered! Apparently, it was registered under my name at Parallels, not my standard domain registrar. So I couldn't go into any control panel and change any of the settings because (after contacting Parallels, Plesk support, my domain registrar/manager, and the reseller's reseller, I can't find $%#@ control panel to correct the nameservers to point to the right server! AAAHHHHHGGGGG!!!!!! [insert Charlie Brown scream here] I'm still talking with the people to try and find a straight answer. So far, it's not going well.

Enough boring details. I'll save the rest for later.

Update: [2011-07-08 07:09pm] After sending a kinda frustrating email to the MyPlesk support, I finally received a straight answer:

Hello Kyle,
Thank you for your email!
Kyle, that is absolutely right, please use [support management link] to manage
your domain [domain in question].
I am sending you the login credentials for the domain management panel:
Login ######
Passwd ######
Should you have any additional questions, please feel free to email me back.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Thanks,
[Support Person]

I logged in, updated the nameservers, and the switchover happened within hours. Why couldn't I have received this from the beginning.

I especially like the part when it says "...that is absolutely right,...". I feel a little happy inside.